Week One Recap

This week was interesting because I introduced choice to more than 200 kids. They all seemed to take to it well and enjoyed the routine and semi-freedom. This week they made their portfolios for their future work.

 The only issue we encountered was that many of them had problems telling me about themselves. They couldn't express themselves freely. I became internally frustrated and sought the help of the wonderful people on the Yahoo TAB group. Their words were encouraging and helpful and provided me with an insight into the mind of an "at-risk" child. It was interesting to see the connections between their words and the work and thoughts of my own students. I always sit down and talk to my students while the work, just to pick their brain but this time I took a slightly different approach. I started to ask them about previous art teachers and their experiences in art, in school and at home. The horror stories that ensued after we discussed previous art classes brought me to tears. Hearing that their work had been torn up and they were told that they weren't any good broke my heart. One girl told me that her last teacher would just yell at her. Obviously this is only one side of the story but at the same time it came from students that were doing quality work on their current project. It was sad to hear how they had been told they would not succeed. I made one girl a pinky promise to never yell. Yelling is not the way to reach many of my students. Having a heart and being compassionate has proved more useful in the past week than yelling ever has. I hope compassion becomes contagious in the room and they feel the safety needed to create wonderful art work. 

I wonder what next next week will bring when they get to really work on their ideas, although many have asked to complete their portfolio. They were pleasantly surprised that there was no time limit on their projects. They could create three in the time of summer camp or one a day. Artists work at their own pace. To solidify that idea I showed them the work of Seurat, and explained how long it took him to work on his most famous piece. Also the work of Andy Warhol who could whip them out in no time in his Factory setting. So there I go, integrating art history without even thinking about it. Oh how I love choice.